Center to Improve Veteran Involvement in Care (CIVIC)

Alan Teo, MD, MS, is CIVIC’s Director. He serves as Associate Director of CIVIC’s Postdoctoral Fellowship in Health Systems Research and is Professor of Psychiatry at Oregon Health & Science University. Dr. Teo's primary research focus is on the role of social connection in influencing mental health outcomes. He has a particular focus on insights and interventions that can mitigate loneliness and social isolation as a suicide prevention strategy. He is a Core investigator with the VA Suicide Prevention Research Impact Network.

In current and recent intervention studies funded by the VA, he is evaluating the effectiveness of VA S.A.V.E., a form of “gatekeeper training” designed to help family and friends assist military veterans at risk for suicide, and he is conducting a pragmatic trial of an adaption of Caring Contacts called the “Buddy Check Postcard Project.” In a new project, he will be leading a randomized controlled trial of “Worried About a Veteran,” a suicide prevention initiative designed to equip loved ones of Veterans with the skills and confidence to have meaningful conversations about firearm safety. He also maintains interests in leveraging social media in health services research. He led an evaluation of the online component VA’s “Keep It Secure” campaign on lethal means safety and is also examining the potential disseminate firearm safety videos on social media.

Dr. Teo’s research has been disseminated by national and international media such as the New York Times, NPR, TIME, and the Wall Street Journal. Clinically, Dr Teo’s interests include collaborative care and cultural psychiatry. He also enjoys opportunities to provide mentorship to physicians interested in research. Dr. Teo completed training at Stanford University, University of California San Francisco, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program at University of Michigan. In his personal time, he enjoys dispersed camping with his family and running mountain and trail ultramarathons.

Samuel Edwards, MD, MPH is a primary care physician, general internist, and health services researcher at the Portland Veterans Affairs (VA) Health Care System and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). Dr. Edwards’s research focuses on the role and function of primary care in health systems, with a focus on the care for high needs individuals through Home-Based Primary Care (HBPC). His Career Development Award uses mixed methods to explore what features of HBPC drive its success in reducing hospitalizations for ambulatory care sensitive conditions, and uses these insights to develop an intervention to promote best practices in HBPC.
Dr. Edwards received his medical degree from the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University, received his training in internal medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and completed fellowship in General Medicine and Primary Care at Harvard Medical School, VA Boston Healthcare System and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Jessica Wyse, PhD MPP is Director of Education and Core Investigator at CIVIC and Associate Professor in the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health. She received a doctorate in Sociology and Public Policy from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2011. She began at CIVIC as an HSR postdoctoral fellow in 2016.

Dr. Wyse’s research focuses on improving access to, and implementation of, evidence-based care for individuals with substance use disorders through health services research, implementation science, mixed-methods research, and evaluation of health system and policy innovations. She is currently PI on a VA HSR-funded prospective cohort study that integrates longitudinal surveys, administrative data and interviews with patients and clinicians to identify motivations for, and modifiable predictors of, early discontinuation of buprenorphine for the treatment of opioid use disorder (OUD). She is also MPI on a qualitative study, funded by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), investigating VA providers' utilization of, and perspectives on, high dose buprenorphine prescribing as a treatment for OUD.

Another line of research focuses on rural health care access and delivery. Her VA Career Development Award examined access to buprenorphine for the treatment of OUD in rural VA primary care settings. Her on-going projects in the rural space include a study of rural Veteran homelessness and housing insecurity in the Pacific Northwest, and an exploratory study examining the use of peer networks to connect rural Veterans who use drugs to VA care.

Steven Dobscha, MD’s research focuses on topics highly relevant to the care of Veterans including suicide prevention, chronic pain, and patient-centered care. Dr. Dobscha has received prior funding for studies of depression and chronic pain collaborative care, studies examining care received in proximity to suicidal ideation and suicide, and a study of impacts of Veteran on-line access to mental health progress notes. He partnered with the Technology and Telehealth (T2) group at Joint Base Lewis-McChord to examine effectiveness of a smartphone app in reducing suicidal thoughts, and developed and evaluated a program to train clinicians to deliver lethal means safety messaging to at risk Veterans in primary care settings. He is currently working with VA’s Office of Suicide Prevention and VA Office of Research and Development Suicide Prevention Actively Managed Portfolio to develop a Suicide Prevention Learning Community with a focus on improving access to large datasets for use in research and quality improvement projects. Dr. Dobscha serves as Research Consultant for the VA Portland Health Care System Mental Health Division, and has served on multiple VA Scientific Merit Review Boards and national VA workgroups and committees. He is Professor of Psychiatry at Oregon Health & Science University.

Dr. Barrett is a Hospitalist physician educator, scientist, and entrepreneur at the Portland VA and Associate Professor in the Division of Hospital Medicine, Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). Perioperative medicine was an early focus of his research career with database inquiries and a small prospective patient cohort study. He then collaborated with nanotechnology engineers in the Oregon Nanomedicine Interdisciplinary Research Group and spun out two biotech companies in the diagnostic space with applications in sepsis and cardiovascular disease. After shutting down the last company, Dr. Barret has been focusing on teaching biotechnology innovation and entrepreneurship to OHSU medical students and faculty and has remained active in the Oregon biotech community. Dr. Barrett’s research has also returned to perioperative medicine, and he is currently working to update how risk is assessed before surgery using pharmacogenomics, artificial intelligence, and super computers on a team that includes the VA National Artificial Intelligence Institute and the VA Surgical Quality Improvement Program.

Dr. Barrett received a BS from Georgetown University, MD with Residency in Internal Medicine at The Ohio State University, and a Masters In Clinical Research from OHSU. Dr. Barrett founded the Oregon Chapter of the Society of Hospital Medicine and the Portland Chapter of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs.

Jennifer L. Barton, MD, MCR is the Rheumatology Section Chief at the VA Portland Health Care System and Professor of Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University. Her research focuses on patient-clinician communication, shared decision making, and the rheumatic diseases. She is also co-lead of the VISN 20 VA Rheumatology ECHO which began in 2019.

Dr. Barton has received a K23 award from the NIH to examine patient-clinician goal concordance in rheumatoid arthritis. Dr. Barton completed fellowship at University of California, San Francisco, and was an assistant professor at UCSF, where she received a career development award from the American College of Rheumatology to study patient-physician discordance around assessment of disease severity in rheumatoid arthritis, and led the development of a low literacy medication summary guide and decision aid tool for vulnerable populations with RA.

Dr. Barton is currently a co-investigator on three CIVIC projects: "Listening to Gulf War Veterans: A Qualitative Inquiry into the Health Experience and Treatment of those with Chronic Multisymptom Illness" (VA HSR grant I01 HX002148-01A@; PI: Helfand); "Patient-Centered Decision Support for Veterans Making Choices About Where to Get Their Health Care: 'Should I Stay or Should I Go?'" (VA HSR Research to Impact for Veterans grant; PI: Slatore); and "Adapting Caring Contacts to Counteract Adverse Effects of Social Distancing during COVID-19" (HSR grant C19 20-216; PI: Teo).

Eilis Boudreau MD, PhD is a CIVIC Investigator and Professor of Neurology, and Medical Informatics and Clinical Epidemiology at Oregon Health & Sciences University. She is the VA-site PI for a multi-site, HSR-funded study comparing the efficacy of different clinical pathways for Veterans referred for sleep apnea care, and for evaluation of the negative predictive value of Home Sleep Apnea testing. She also heads up the VA Portland participation in the VA Enterprise-Wise TeleSleep program designed to improve access and quality of sleep care to rurally located Veterans. Dr. Boudreau's research focuses on improving data capture at the point of clinical care from the Electronic Health Record (EHR), data harmonization across EHR and research studies, with an interest in developing computational phenotypes.

Kathleen Carlson, MS, PhD is a CIVIC Core Investigator and Professor of Epidemiology at the Oregon Health and Science University - Portland State University (OHSU-PSU) School of Public Health. Dr. Carlson trained in injury epidemiology and health services research and has been conducting VA research since 2006. She participated in the VA Advanced Fellowship in Health Services Research (HSR) at the Minneapolis VA Healthcare System from 2006-2008 and completed a VA HSR Career Development Award from 2010-2015. Dr. Carlson's work focuses on the co-occurrence of physical and psychological trauma among returning Veterans and their post-deployment reintegration into families, work, and community; she is currently examining VA and community health services for Veterans diagnosed with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Her research also focuses on the epidemiology, prevention, and control of TBI and other traumatic injurities; firearm-related injuries including self-harm and interpersonal violence; opioid and other medication safety; and the epidemiology of, and clinical services for, tinnitus and other auditory disorders among Veterans. She also collaborates with the Long-term Impact of Military-relevant Brain Injury Consortium-Chronic Effects of Neurotrauma Consortium, serving as a Principal Investigator of the Portland longitudinal study site. Her OHSU research focuses on injury and violence epidemiology and prevention among Oregonians more broadly. Dr. Carlson also teaches masters- and doctoral-level epidemiology students in the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health and directs the OHSU Center for Gun Violence Prevention Research.

Jason I. Chen, PhD is a CIVIC Core Investigator. He also has appointments at OHSU of Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Associate Faculty within the Clinical Psychology PhD Program. He received his PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of South Florida in 2016 where he focused on mechanisms of suicide risk and the implementation and dissemination of suicide prevention programming. Dr. Chen completed his APA-accredited internship at the VA Eastern Colorado Health Care System and a postdoctoral fellowship in health services research at CIVIC. His research lab, the Connecting Communities for Suicide Prevention Lab (CCSP), studies suicide prevention for high-risk populations with a focus on military veterans, community-based approaches, and help-seeking processes. Dr. Chen also collaborates with the OHSU Media Team and Suicide Prevention Program Managers to provide technical support and training for the OHSU community.

Kate Clauss, PhD is a COIN investigator in CIVIC and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). She received her PhD in Clinical Psychology at Auburn University before completing the NW Mental Research Illness and Clinical Center (MIRECC) Advanced Fellowship in Mental Illness Research and Treatment at the Portland VA. Dr. Clauss joined the Brain Health Research and INformatics (BHRAIN) Lab in 2023 where her research combines clinical expertise with data science to establish data resources that can be used to address high priority veteran needs including optimal clinical decision making and efficient service delivery in the areas of PTSD, suicide prevention, and TBI. She has expertise in evidence-based psychotherapy for PTSD, cognitive factors that influence trauma-related psychopathology (e.g., executive functioning, attentional control), novel methods (e.g., eye tracking) and data science (e.g., evidence synthesis, data harmonization). Her current work includes developing study-level and individual patient databases to support precision medicine as well as characterizing and more effectively intervening on cognitive dysfunction.

Robert Folmer, Ph.D. is a CIVIC Investigator and Professor of Otolaryngology at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). Dr. Folmer is also a Research Investigator at the RR&D National Center for Rehabilitative Auditory Research (NCRAR) at VA Portland. He is Program Manager for a VA Enterprise-Wide Initiative (EWI) called TeleSleep that is funded by the Office of Rural Health (ORH). The goal of the TeleSleep Program, which includes 14 Hub sites and more than 50 Spoke sites nationwide, is to improve the quality of and Veterans’ access to VA Sleep Medicine Services by using advanced telehealth strategies. The group is also conducting a multi-site, HSR-funded study that compares the efficacy of different clinical pathways for Veterans who are referred for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). At OHSU, Dr. Folmer was the Chief of Clinical Services for the Tinnitus Clinic from 1998-2007 and was also part of the team that developed the Dangerous Decibels hearing loss prevention education program. He joined the NCRAR in 2007 and served as Program Manager for a joint VA/Department of Defense Hearing Loss Prevention Initiative. His research interests include transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) for treatment of tinnitus, depression and PTSD; electrophysiological assessment of auditory and cognitive processing in patients who experience neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s Disease, multiple sclerosis, or traumatic brain injury. Dr. Folmer’s team is currently conducting clinical trials of 2 different drugs for treatment of chronic tinnitus: etanercept and ketamine.

Sara E. Golden, MPH, PHD is a CIVIC Core Investigator and Research Assistant Professor in the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care Medicine at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU). Dr. Golden trained in medical sociology and public health, and has been conducting VA health services research since 2012. She seeks to identify and address gaps in service that can hinder patient care, focusing on modifiable strategies to foster efficient, patient-centered care. Her primary areas of interest are patient-clinician communication, decision making, and tobacco cessation, especially among patients with and at risk of lung cancer. Dr. Golden’s other research interests center around access to care, quality of care at the end of life, and critical care service delivery improvements. Her current projects include a large national study intended to identify processes that VA can quickly implement to improve Veterans’ access and experiences of lung cancer screening care in community settings, and a randomized control trial to test the effectiveness of a decision aid among patients making lung cancer treatment-related decisions in clinical settings. Dr. Golden completed her BS in Cell and Molecular Biology at Santa Clara University, her MPH at Benedictine University, and her PhD in Sociology at Portland State University.

Diana Govier, PhD, MPH, is a core investigator and health economist at CIVIC, investigator with the VHA Office of Rural Health, and assistant professor at Oregon Health & Science University in the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health. Dr. Govier received a master's in health systems management and policy and doctorate in health policy from Oregon State University. She also completed a VA Advanced Fellowship in Health Systems Research in 2021. Dr. Govier's research foci include evaluating and enhancing the implementation and effectiveness of health policy and care delivery reforms among Veterans with chronic pain and combat injuries, and those who live rurally, and have complex medical needs. Her research is grounded in quasi-experimental and epidemiological approaches augmented with implementation science and participatory designs to maximize the value of policy and care delivery to meet the needs of these populations. Her VA HSR career development award seeks to understand the current state of chronic pain care use, quality, and costs among Veterans who use both VA-direct and VA-purchased care through the MISSION Act, and identify approaches to optimize multi-system chronic pain care delivery and outcomes. Other ongoing studies include care coordination implementation and outcomes among high-risk Veterans, VA-purchased care use among post-9/11 Veterans with traumatic brain injury, and methods for defining rural people and places and implications for VA health care access/policies/research.

Catherine Hwang, MD, is a general internist and health services researcher at the VA Portland Health Care System and Oregon Health and Science University. She completed her public health training at Johns Hopkins, served as an Epi Scholar at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, and worked in the Division of Epidemiology at the US Food and Drug Administration. She subsequently completed medical school at the University of Washington, residency at Virginia Mason Medical Center, and fellowship at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Catherine is passionate about connecting with her patients in personable and meaningful ways. Her scholarly interests include improving access, affordability, and adherence to prescription medicines.

Denise Hynes, MPH, PhD, RN has been a Research Scientist in the US Department of Veterans Affairs since 1991 and joined CIVIC as a Core Investigator in 2018. She is an experienced nurse, health services researcher, and data scientist. Her research focuses on innovative approaches to improve healthcare quality and access. Her service focuses on database and informatics methods to support research and evaluation of healthcare interventions.

She received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree from Loyola University of Chicago, Master of Public Health degree from Johns Hopkins University, School of Hygiene and Public Health, and her Doctoral degree (PhD) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, School of Public Health. She completed postdoctoral training at the Cecil B. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Drexel University through the Hedwig van Ameringen Executive Leadership for Academic Medicine (ELAM) in 2014. She served as tenure track faculty at Duke University, Loyola University Chicago, and the University of Illinois at Chicago. Dr. Hynes also holds an appointment at Oregon State University as Professor in the College of Public Health and Human Sciences and as the Director of the new Health Data & Informatics (HDI) Center in the Center for Genome Research and Biocomputing.

Devan Kansagara, MD, MCR is Professor of Medicine and Associate Professor of Medical Informatics and Clinical Epidemiology at Oregon Health and Science University. He practices internal medicine in the VA Portland Health Care System. One of his areas of interest is evidence based medicine, and the use of evidence to guide health policy. Dr Kansagara serves as a Systematic Review Consultant for the Evidence Synthesis Program Coordinating Center, a program nationally responsible for developing evidence syntheses to help guide VA policy. He is currently the Vice Chair of the American College of Physicians Clinical Guidelines Committee, and also works on health policy for the Oregon Health Authority. Dr Kansagara's other main area of interest is health systems redesign. In particular, he has done intervention and implementation work with hospital to home care transitions and the patient centered medical home. Dr Kansagara completed his BA in English at Amherst College. He received an MD from the University of Connecticut School of Medicine, and completed residency training at Yale University. He received his Masters in Clinical Research from Oregon Health and Science University.
Dr. Kansagara serves as a primary mentor to Haley Holmer, MPH, PhD, one of CIVIC's post-doctoral fellows.

Kamini Kuchinad, MD, MPH, is a CIVIC Core Investigator, a staff rheumatologist at the Portland VA Medical Center, and an Assistant Professor in the Division of Arthritis and Rheumatic Diseases. She completed medical school, internal medicine residency, and rheumatology fellowship at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. During her training, she also earned a Master of Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Kuchinad’s research focuses on patient–clinician communication and treatment decision-making in rheumatologic diseases, with particular interest in the impact of multimorbidity on and integration of Whole Health therapies into rheumatologic care.

Travis Lovejoy, PhD, MPH is a clinical psychologist with specialized training in quantitative methodologies, health psychology, behavioral medicine, and substance use disorders. Dr. Lovejoy’s research interests include the scientific development, testing, and implementation of theory-based clinical and health services interventions that improve individual and population health. He is currently in the 4^th year of a 5-year VA HSR-funded Career Development Award that examines novel treatment approaches for chronic pain in veterans with co-occurring substance use disorders. Additional VA-funded research examines patient outcomes following discontinuation of long-term opioid therapy. Dr. Lovejoy’s research approaches include large retrospective administrative database studies, prospective cohort studies, clinical and health services efficacy and effectiveness trials, and mixed methods approaches to study the implementation of evidence-based practices. Dr. Lovejoy is the Lead of the CIVIC Implementation Science Core and Executive Committee Member of the Oregon Health & Science University Dissemination & Implementation Research Collaborative.

Kate Mackey, MD, MPP is the Director of the VA Evidence Synthesis Program Coordinating Center, where she works on evidence reviews covering a broad range of topics of interest to VHA patient populations and VA leadership. She is board-certified in Internal Medicine and Addiction Medicine and works in primary care and substance use disorder treatment at the VA Portland Health Care System. She serves as a facility and VISN-level PACT Pain Champion, positions supported by the PMOP initiative. Kate is from Washington, DC and has a BA from Georgetown University, Master of Public Policy from Duke University, and MD from the University of Texas in San Antonio. She completed her residency and chief residency at OHSU where she is now an Associate Professor of Medicine. Her research interests include chronic pain, substance use, and preventive medicine.

Benjamin Morasco, PhD is a Core Investigator, a staff psychologist at the VA Portland Health Care System, and Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Oregon Health and Science University. His primary research focus is on improving the safety and effectiveness of treatment for chronic pain. Dr. Morasco’s currently funded projects are examining outcomes of cannabis use for pain, strategies to change prescription opioid use, and randomized controlled trials examining the effectiveness of different multidisciplinary treatments for chronic pain. He also collaborates on other projects examining strategies for improving pain care for veterans living in rural settings, treating pain in patients with substance use disorders, and decision support to improve safety in pain management. He serves on local and national pain management workgroups, is a supervisor with the clinical psychology training program at the VA Portland Health Care System, and is Associate Director for Education for the VISN-20 MIRECC. Within CIVIC, Dr. Morasco also served as a research mentor for other investigators with career development awards. 

Shannon Nugent, PhD is a core investigator at the VA Portland Healthcare System, Center to Improve Veteran Involvement in Care (CIVIC) and an Associate Professor at Oregon Health and Science University in the Department of Psychiatry. She completed her PhD in Clinical Health Psychology from the University of Colorado Denver in 2015 and completed a two-year health services research fellowship with CIVIC in 2018. Dr. Nugent’s research interests are focused on understanding and improving mental health outcomes among individuals with serious medical conditions, including Gulf War Illness, Long COVID, and cancer. She recently completed a five-year Mentored Research Scholar Grant from the American Cancer Society. In addition, she is leading projects funded by the National Cancer Institute and VA HSR related to cannabis use among cancer survivors and improving care for Long COVID. She also collaborates on several other VA and NIH funded projects.

Maya O'Neil, PhD is a CIVIC Core Investigator and neuropsychologist at the VA Portland Health Care System (OR Psychologist License #2248). She is also a Professor at Oregon Health and Science University in the Departments of Psychiatry and Medical Informatics and Clinical Epidemiology. She is Associate Director for Education for the VISN-20 MIRECC. She recently completed an AHRQ-supported K Fellowship focused on patient experiences related to PTSD and cognitive functioning. Her current research focuses on assessing and treating cognitive problems in Veterans with PTSD, which was recently funded by the VA through a Career Development Award. She is a neuropsychologist on the Rural Telemental Health clinical team at the Portland VA. She supervises practicum students, interns, and postdoctoral fellows, and assesses and treats patients with PTSD and other commonly comorbid conditions like depression and traumatic brain injury. She is the Principal Investigator of two OHSU projects funded by AHRQ and the National Center for PTSD examining randomized controlled trial data on PTSD interventions. She has also been the Principal Investigator of multiple Systematic Reviews of mental health and traumatic brain injury topics for the VA. Her current research examines how PTSD treatment and cognitive problems interact, and how to best treat the cognitive problems associated with PTSD. In her spare time she bikes, swims, and walks her 4 dogs.

Sarah Ono, PhD, is a cultural anthropologist with extensive ethnographic and qualitative data experience who specializes in the complementarity of interview, observational, and focus group methods in health services research settings. As a core investigator with the VA HSR Center to Improve Veteran Involvement in Care at the VA Portland Health Care System, Dr. Ono is a leader in promoting and advancing Veteran engagement in research and collaborates on the VA Women's Health Research Network. As the Operations Director of the Veterans Rural Health Resource Center in Portland, OR (VRHRC-P), a field site for the VHA Office of Rural Health, she currently focuses on improving access to health care for rural Veterans and increasing the engagement of patients and communities in the process of research. An Associate Professor in Psychiatry at Oregon Health & Science University, she collaborates on work in the areas of suicide prevention, cannabis as it relates to pain management, and national strategies for rapid implementation of proven practices.
Dr. Ono serves as a primary mentor for Traben Pleasant, MSc, PhD.

Christopher D. Pfeiffer, MD, MHS serves as the Hospital Epidemiologist at the VA Portland Health Care System (VAPORHCS) and Associate Professor of Medicine at the Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU). Dr. Pfeiffer’s areas of interest include healthcare-associated infection, multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs), hospital epidemiology, and infections in the immunocompromised host. His work is centered around preventing, detecting, and controlling the spread of of multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs) with a particular focus on carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE). He serves as Medical Director for the Drug-Resistant Organism Prevention and Coordinated Regional Epidemiology (DROP-CRE) Network with the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) and is involved in multicenter research collaborations. Most notable is his role as Principal Investigator of a CDC-funded project to implement a novel electronic system to track patients with MDROs such as CRE as they are transferred from VA facility-to-facility across the country. Dr. Pfeiffer is also a co-investigator for the VA HSR-funded CREATE projects, a VA CSP study of treatment for recurrent Clostridium Difficile, and a NIH-funded study of clinician decision making.

Christopher Slatore, MD, MS is a health services researcher and Professor at Oregon Health & Science University. Dr. Slatore completed his HSR CDA in 2015, which was a mixed-methods study of the relationship between communication strategies and patient-centered outcomes among patients with pulmonary nodules. He published nine journal articles directly related to this project. Other ongoing projects focus on the prevention, detection, treatment, and healthcare delivery for patients with tobacco-related lung diseases, chiefly lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). His research aims to improve patient outcomes and to develop innovative approaches to treatment in these areas. Dr. Slatore is or has been funded by the Radiation Oncology Institute, VA, American Cancer Society, and the Knight Cancer Institute to evaluate patient-centered outcomes for patients with and at risk for lung cancer. Clinically, he is helps lead several local and national programs regarding lung cancer screening and pulmonary nodule surveillance. Dr. Slatore's work has been substantially supported by our Center, including grant submission support and assistance from our statistician and data analyst.

Chris Stauffer, MD is Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Oregon Health & Science University, Physician-Scientist with the VA Portland Health Care System, and dual board-certified in Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine. Dr. Stauffer is the Director of the Social Neuroscience & Psychotherapy Lab, which aims to maximize the benefits of psychotherapy through the adjunct use of social psychopharmacology, such as oxytocin, MDMA, and psilocybin. Dr. Stauffer serves on the VA-wide Psychedelic Medicine Integrated Project Team. He is also a Co-Founder of the Open Psychedelic Evaluation Nexus, an inter-agency group that conducts health services research on legalized state-level psychedelic services.

Anaїs Tuepker, PhD, MPH,, is a sociologist and the Qualitative Core Director for CIVIC, a role in which she supports CIVIC fellows and investigators to enhance their use of qualitative and mixed methods in health systems research. Her work often utilizes participatory, realist, and/or action-oriented approaches to engage health workers and patients in co-creating knowledge for system redesign and improvement. Her most recently funded work as Principal Investigator (PI) explores the use of participatory methods to learn the impacts of engaging Veterans as researchers and advisors, not only as study participants. Previously, she has evaluated national VA initiatives including the Patient Aligned Care Team model implementation, interprofessional primary care training, and employee innovation. An Assistant Research Professor in General Internal Medicine and Geriatrics at Oregon Health and Science University, she is also Co-Director of Research with OHSU’s RELATE Lab (Research in Equity, Leadership, And Team Effectiveness), where she studies the uses of relational practices and organizing for community and health system change. Her interest in dismantling barriers to care has led to her role as a co-investigator on studies examining topics including home-based primary care variation and impacts on health, access, and equity; improving quality and relevance of services for women Veterans; and the impact of supportive housing for Veterans experiencing homelessness. Recently, more of her work is focused on health system and community resilience in times of crisis, and American Indian/Alaska Native health and flourishing.

Kelly C. Vranas, MD, is an Associate Professor in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care at Oregon Health & Science University, a Staff Physician at the Portland VA Medical Center, and a Core Investigator at CIVIC. She received her M.D. from Cornell University and completed residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. As part of her Pulmonary and Critical Care fellowship training at Stanford University, she spent a year as a research fellow at the Clinical Excellence Research Center, the first university-based research center exclusively dedicated to discovering, testing, and evaluating cost-saving innovations in healthcare while simultaneously improving the quality and experience of care. She is now a critical care health services researcher at CIVIC focused on improving the quality, efficiency, and value of critical care for Veterans hospitalized with acute respiratory failure through innovations in the care delivery process. Other ongoing projects include studying the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on ICU clinicians experiences as frontline healthcare workers, and the impact of type and timing hospital emergency responses to the COVID-19 pandemic on patient outcomes.